What We’ve Been Reading: April 2016
This is a Moose by Richard T. Morris — 4 stars
Pleasantly enjoyable but won’t be a classic for most people. It has a nice message that kids (and animals) can do or be anything they set their minds to; even if you’re a moose you can try to be an astronaut and have fantastic adventures.
Step Gently Out by Helen Frost — 4 stars
The words in the book are just phrases or a few words per page, creating a poem throughout the book. The images are why you read this book. The insect views are up-close and beautiful. They encourage kids to look closely at the world around them. I appreciated the reminder as an adult reading this that the world is beautiful and strange to someone so new to it. Having more patience and curiosity to consider things on such an intimate level can be pleasurable in its own right and lead to learning.
Dora’s Detective Adventure — 1 star
Generally, if there’s a logo or trademarked image on it, it’s probably not worth reading in my opinion.
Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site (with sounds) by Sherri Dusky Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld — 3 stars
Of course this quickly devolved into just pressing the buttons rather than really reading the story, but that’s okay. I do wish that the noises had been more what the different machines sounded like rather than just a few of the machines and then random other sounds. Still, enjoyable.
The Dinosaur Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta and Ralph Masiello — 4 stars
As the parent, I liked this book. The information in it is delightful. The images are beautiful. My daughter even likes it just fine. However, I do wonder if there’s a mismatch going on here. For an alphabet book, which I see as a low-level book to communicate largely about the letters in the alphabet, this information about the dinosaurs was much more high-level. I hope that my daughter remembers a good bit of the dinosaur information in the book, but I’m not expecting her to. I think the break from the standard dinosaurs you might encounter in other books with this age group was perhaps more for the parents’ sake and authors’ enjoyment than the kids’ educational takeaways.
